Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>> > > This reminds me: is there some fundamental reason backuppc
>> > > can't use symlinks? It would make so many things like this
>> > > *so* much easier. It such a great package otherwise; this is
>> > > the only thing that's given me cause to be annoyed with it.
>> >
>> > Still wondering this.
>>
>> with hard links, you can tell that a file in the main pool is no
>> longer needed, by looking at its link count. when the link count
>> goes to 1, none of the per-PC backup trees is referencing it, so
>> it can be deleted. (this is what the BackupPC_trashClean process
>> does.)
>>
>> with symlinks, you wouldn't get that reference count, and "garbage
>> collection" would be much more expensive.
>
> I'd happily pay the price in garbage collection to have something
> that could be remote mirrored easily. Judging by the number of
> requests this mailing list has had for such a feature, I'm not the
> only one.
Hardlinking is an atomic operation, tied to the inode of the filesystem
so once established the target identity can't be confused. Symlinks are
just re-evaluated as filenames when you open them. So, if you created a
symlink to a pooled filename, then the copy in the pool directory is
removed and re-created (likely, because you can't tell what symlinks
need it), you'd end up with filenames under the pc directory pointing to
entirely wrong contents. With hardlinks, even if you remove the name in
the pool directory, the pc instances still retain their contents.
> I'd even be willing to put some money forward if someone wants to
> code this feature; I'd rather not dig into backuppc's code if I can
> avoid it.
This isn't really possible at the file level. I think the zfs
incremental send/receive might work. In some cases it might work to
just run a copy of backuppc remotely, saving directly to an encrypted
filesystem instead of trying to mirror a copy.
> Having options to easily allow backuppc to encrypt the pool while it
> compresses would also be wonderful.
That's probably possible, but I'd want someone else to use it a few
years before I'd trust it.
--
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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